Joan of Arc (17 page)

Some of Joan’s defenders were more intelligent than her attackers. Gerson or a Gersonian had set out the theological arguments raised by Joan’s case, but the master had not lived to resolve them; and those who judged Joan were lawyers not theologians. The most important of them, Cauchon, had never finished the lengthy course that would have led to a doctorate in theology. He had been diverted into clerical politics; and it was as a clerical politician that he judged Joan. Her assertions needed to be analysed, their implications established, but what concerned Cauchon and his fellow judges was the necessity of her condemnation. They lacked detachment. They had a job to do and they did it. They were professionals in the art of evading awkward questions. By 1450 it was possible to ask those awkward questions.

B
y 1450 the political hesitations of 1429 were long forgotten by Charles VII. He was king over a greater area of France than any of his predecessors; he had shown his independence from the papacy by announcing in the Pragmatic Sanction of Bourges (1438) that he not the pope would nominate bishops; he had provided his country with an heir who would be an even more skilful politician than himself, the Dauphin Louis (Louis XI), and until 1450 he had enjoyed the favours of a famous mistress, Agnès Sorel, who may have posed for the Virgin Mary in Jean Fouquet’s masterpiece, the Melun diptych.

In 1450, with Normandy occupied and Rouen submissive, Charles VII realised that he could investigate Joan’s condemnation, for if she had been a witch and heretic then his status as Most Christian King was impugned. On 13 February he told his counsellor Guillaume Bouillé to inquire into the conduct of the trial undertaken against Joan by ‘our ancient enemies the English’, who, ‘against reason, had cruelly put her to death’. Bouillé was Rector of the University of Paris, the post once held by Cauchon, and Dean of the Theological Faculty, Dean of Noyon, a member of the Great Council, and one time ambassador to Rome. He may have been the first to argue on parchment that the Rouen verdict was unsafe, and at any rate it was he who on 4 and 5 March held an official inquiry at Rouen into events that happened nineteen years earlier. He questioned seven witnesses: four Dominicans from St-Jacques, Rouen, Toutmouillé, de La Pierre, Ladvenu, and Duval; the notary Manchon, the usher Massieu, and Beaupère, a chief examiner. But, although several he consulted thought the original trial was illegal, the case was dropped.

In 1452 Guillaume d’Estouteville, Cardinal-bishop of Digne, Legate of Pope Nicholas V, returned to the subject, at the request of Joan’s mother, Isabelle Romée, who urged her daughter’s rehabilitation on both civil and ecclesiastical grounds, claiming that the family had been damaged by the imputation of heresy to Joan.

It is said that the rehabilitation process was vitiated by its political nature. In 1431 the English and Burgundians had not worried that they might offend the French. In 1450, however, the king of France knew that he might offend the English, the inquisitors and the University of Paris, but using Joan’s family made the case a private one. It was a clever ruse, which would restore Joan’s honour and indirectly the honour of the Inquisition and the king.

The cardinal was careful to invite the help of Jean Bréhal, Inquisitor of France and Prior of the Convent of the Jacobins in Paris; and, together, they opened their inquiry at Rouen in April 1452. They heard the evidence of twenty-one people, including some of those who had given evidence in 1450. When the cardinal had to leave Rouen, the inquiry was left in the hands of Bréhal and Philippe la Rose, the treasurer of the cathedral. The pope was concerned. He did not wish to offend the English, then enduring the death throes of the Hundred Years War, and once more an inquest lapsed. It was not till 1455, after Pope Nicholas had died, that Pope Calixtus III, of the Spanish Borja family (Borgia in Italian), agreed to the petition of the d’Arc family, granting a rescript authorising the process of revision, and naming Jean Jouvenal des Ursins, Archbishop of Reims, Guillaume Chartier, Bishop of Paris, and Richard de Longueil, Bishop of Coutances, as delegates for the trial. These three then invited the Inquisitor, Jean Bréhal, to help them.

The case was solemnly opened on 7 November 1455 at Notre-Dame, in Paris. Joan’s mother and brothers came before the court to present their humble petition for a revision of her sentence, demanding only ‘the triumph of truth and justice’. The court heard the request with some emotion. Isabelle Romée threw herself at the commissioners’ feet, showed the papal rescript and wept aloud, while her advocate, Pierre Maugier, and his assistants urged justice for her and for the memory of her martyred daughter. Many of those present joined aloud in the petition, so at last it seemed as if one great cry for justice broke from the whole crowd. The commissioners formally received the petition, and chose 17 November, ten days later, for its consideration, warning the petitioners that the 1431 trial could be confirmed, not reversed, as they had hoped, but promising them careful consideration of the case were they to persist in their appeal.

On 17 November the court met in Notre-Dame for a second time, the papal rescript was solemnly read and the advocate for the petitioners made a formal accusation against the judges and Promoter of the earlier trial, none of whom, as has been said, was still alive. They took care to exclude the assessors involved in the case, whom, the advocated declared, had been led to wrong conclusions by false deductions. When the advocate finished, the Archbishop of Reims and the Bishop of Paris said that, with the Inquisitor, they were ready to act as judges in the appeal case. They appointed 12 December for the inaugural sitting and cited all concerned in the case to appear before them on that day.

At the opening of the trial on 12 December, the d’Arc family was represented by the procurator, Guillaume Prévosteau, formerly prosecutor in the case started by Cardinal d’Estouteville, but only the plaintiffs were represented, as no one was there to answer for either of the accused judges or for the Prosecutor Estivet. The case was adjourned until 15 December so that advocates for the defendants could be summoned to appear. Yet, when the court met, no one was there to represent the accused, and therefore five days’ further delay was allowed. Court officials were appointed; and the registrars of the former trial, who were present, were asked if they wished to defend the process in which they had been involved. When they said no, they were told to produce any documents of the 1431 trial still in their possession. In this way the commissioners had before them the actual minutes of the previous trial, written in Manchon’s own hand and presented by him, and also his formal attestation of the authenticity of the official
procès-verbal
, on which further inquiries would be based.

The proceedings of the preliminary inquiry of 1452, which had been initiated by Cardinal d’Estouteville and his delegates, were added, at the request of the prosecutor, to the official documents of the trial of rehabilitation, but as the inquiry of 1450 had been made under secular authority, it was treated as valueless and therefore not included in the authorised case. On 18 December the prosecutor lodged his request for the d’Arc family and begged that the previous sentence should be declared null, on the grounds that as in both form and substance it was null and void, it should be publicly and legally declared so. On 20 December, the final day appointed for any representative of the accused to appear, the one family to produce an advocate was the Cauchon family. In their name, the advocate stated that the late bishop’s heirs had no wish to defend the soundness of a trial they had not been concerned with and that took place either before they were born or when they were very young children; that Joan, despite her pure and innocent life, had been a victim of English hatred, and that for this reason the responsibility for her death fell chiefly on the English; and, finally, they requested that the rehabilitation of Joan might not prejudice their own interests, as they had a large house in Rouen, and they invoked the benefits of the royal amnesty granted after the conquest of Normandy. With these words perhaps the name Cauchon could have moved for ever out of the glare of historical notoriety into decent obscurity; but it did not.

Other defendants were declared contumacious for not appearing and cited once more to appear on 16 February. On 20 December the prosecutor formulated his accusation and drew the court’s attention to some features of the previous trial that tended to vitiate the whole: first, the intervention of the hidden registrars and the alterations, additions and omissions found in the twelve articles; second, the suppression of the preliminary inquiry, and the obvious prejudices of the judges; third, the incompetence of the court and the unfairness of the treatment received throughout by the accused, leading as it did to an illegal sentence and an irregular execution.

The Promoter then asked for inquiries into Joan’s life and conduct and into how she had taken on the reconquest of France herself. Orders were then given for Reginald de Chichery, Dean of Vaucouleurs, and for Wautrin Thierry, Canon of Toul, to go to Domremy and Vaucouleurs to collect information. Meanwhile, a document containing articles was drawn up, on the first thirty-three of which are based the later inquiries made at Paris, Orléans and Rouen. These set out the plaintiffs’ case for the benefit of the still absent defendants, and stated at great length why, on grounds both of fact and of reason, the sentence should be revised.

On the very last day for the citation of the defendants, 16 February 1456, the court met again. This time the accused were represented by legal successors: the Promoter of the diocese of Beauvais, Bredouillé, as that of Bishop Guillaume de Hellande; and Chaussetier, Prior of the Evreux Convent, as that of the Beauvais Dominicans, to whose order Joan’s other judge, Jean Lemaître, belonged. The representatives denied responsibility for the previous trial, but submitted themselves to the court’s judgment; and, as no objection was offered to the 101 articles, the judges accepted these and the case could proceed.

The 1456 inquiry lasted several months. Thirty-four witnesses were heard, in January and February, at Domremy and Vaucouleurs; forty-one, in February and March, at Orléans; twenty at Paris, in April and May; nineteen at Rouen, in December and May; and on 28 May, at Lyon, the vice-inquisitor of the province received the solitary deposition of Jean d’Aulon, whose evidence has a special importance, as he had been the steward of her household and her most devoted follower.

The d’Arc family’s advocate asked the judges to read the comments of various learned men on the case, which documents he begged should be made part of the trial’s formal proceedings. Eight such comments were filed away as documents of the
procès-verbal
; the views were summarised in a ‘Recollectio’ drafted by the Inquisitor, Jean Bréhal; and this document in its turn was later the basis of the eventual sentence of nullification.

O
ne witness stands out from all the rest, as only he gave evidence in Lyons and only his evidence is preserved in the original French. Curiously, this makes the voice of Jean d’Aulon, once Joan’s steward, now Seneschal of Beaucaire, sound as formal as any of the other witnesses whose words are recorded in Latin, as the notary has kept carefully to the form of a legal document. Like their words, d’Aulon’s are always recorded in the third person, from the time in Poitiers when he first heard of Joan until the last time he was with her as a fellow prisoner at Beaulieu. During the year he knew her he had privileged access to certain moments in her public life: he was there when she learnt the verdict from Poitiers, when she was declared a virgin by the Queen of Sicily, when she was given armour to fight at Orléans. With her he entered Orléans, and he remembered how she leaped from her bed to encourage the attack on the boulevard of St-Loup, how before the assault on the bridge she was wounded by an arrow and he had her wound dressed, how she fought bravely in the upper Loire valley. He remembered her being examined by ‘certain masters in theology’ who had found her ‘a good Christian and true Catholic’, and by ladies, who found her a true virgin.
¹
Having told the story of her exploits, he then added, ‘he had never seen or known in her anything that should not be found in a good Christian’. She tried to go to Mass every day, she confessed and went to communion, she never swore or blasphemed. She loved a good honest man (‘
bon prudhomme
’) whom she knew to have led a chaste life. When the Maid had to do anything concerning war, she told d’Aulon that her ‘Counsel’ had advised her what she ought to do and she told him she was visited by three ‘counsellors’, but when asked for details of her ‘Counsel’, she told him sharply that he was not worthy to be told. He was sure ‘she was full of all the virtue which could be or should be in a good Christian’, and he said this ‘without love, favour, hate, or any suborning, but only for the truth, and as he has seen it and known it in the Maid’. He was one of those who, as a young man living beside her, said that although he had seen her naked body, he had never felt any sexual desire for her. He was also unique in that he added a piece of information about her sexuality; he had been told by her women that she had never known the ‘malady of women’. D’Aulon’s remark has inspired much speculation in the last hundred years. Perhaps Joan never menstruated, or perhaps nobody knew if she did or not. No other witness suggests that Joan had not reached puberty. What we do know is that one man who knew her well thought she had not done so, but then no witness had ever seen Joan relieve herself when on the march.

Many witnesses had memories that went back longer than d’Aulon’s, witnesses who had known Joan as a child; and in their cases there is nothing exciting to relate. In the region of Domremy, Greux and Epinal, labourers, wives, widows and sons remembered the girl who became a woman so fast. Jean Morel from Greux, her godfather, knew all about the fairies’ tree that had so fascinated Joan’s interrogators. He had heard that the fairies used to dance underneath it but came no longer, since the Gospel of St John had been read there; young girls used to dance there on Laetare Sunday in the middle of Lent and had feasts there on holy days; Joan had been there with the others, but she never went alone. He was glad to speak of her piety and the love she inspired in the village; and he was delighted to mention that when she was famous he had met her at Châlons, when the king was going to Reims to be anointed, and she had given him a red dress she had been wearing. Others had seen her pray, work in the fields, go to confession, knew she did not swear, recalled how she said ‘Adieu’ to her father when she set out for Vaucouleurs, and that later she had gone to ‘France’. Hauviette, a wife from Syonne, near Neufchâteau, had been with Joan to the well of the thorn on Laetare Sunday, and wept when her friend went away – Hauviette’s name was used by the poet Charles Péguy when he imagined Joan’s time in Domremy. Joan was kind, and she looked after the sick.